The basement was advertised as “partially finished”. We weren’t sure what to think of that, it has the scary shower, affectionately know by us as the “torture room” since it would make a great addition to some serial killer drama. The three rooms were also “finished” in the sense that they had carpet floors, while …
One of the remaining (massive) projects is to refinish the kitchen. It has built-in, what must be hand-made, cabinets, which really needed a makeover. However, after moving in, we realized that the kitchen (actually most of the old parts of the house) have lead paint. The top layer is lead-free, but the primer has lead. …
It’s very common for garages in Hawaii to not have doors (in case you wonder, that does not make them carports. Carports have to be open on at least two sides, or something like that), and ours didn’t. The problem with having no garage door is that most people also don’t have motorcycles, and given …
One thing we had decided that we definitely wanted to do back before we put in an offer on the place was to open up the tiny doorway between the kitchen and living room. The kitchen felt really closed in, and the living room had this long interior wall. By opening up the doorway, we’d …
Finally, we’re getting to the end of the floor story. With the floors sanded, it was time to apply finish. We (or really, I) spent many hours trying to figure out what kind of finish to use. There are many choices, oil-based or water-based, cheap or expensive, etc. Given the amount of work we had …
There’s been a while since the last episode of the whirlwind month of work after we moved in. That’s because, can you imagine, the work has just continued… Anyway, when we ended, we were just about to go pick up my Dad at the airport and start sanding the floors. We were going to rent …
While all traces of the carpet in the other rooms got ripped out in less than two days, it took about a week to get it all out from the kitchen. This had to be done in stages. First, the carpet was ripped up. However, since the carpet was glued to the floor (as seen …
Continue reading ‘Floor refinishing #2 – the joys of methylene chloride’ »
We moved in at the end of October, and the absolutely imperative task #1 to accomplish was to rip out the atrocious carpets that covered the hardwood floors. We had already scoped out the floors when we first looked at the place because, honestly, if it hadn’t had those wood floors underneath we would have …
… and we are back online after the move to Hawaii! Expect many home improvement updates soon.
This may be a more pedestrian project, but it looks like I’m going to have to do some home improvement. Unless we hit some unforeseen snag, this will be our new home in Hawaii: It needs a bit of work, so the next few projects will probably have to do with things like installing a …